Shrubs Quotes

• What would surprise a lot of people about me... I'm a gardener! I have a green thumb. I really like to get into the shrubs, the bushes, and really cultivate.

  Jeffrey Donovan

  People, Thumbs, Green

  58 Copy quote

• If you cut a shrub back because it's just too big, and it dies, you haven't lost anything but a plant that couldn't live by your rules.

  Janet Macunovich

  Cutting, Plant, Lost

  9 Copy quote

• I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Afternoon, Lasts

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2713, Delphi Classics

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• I find the love of garden grows upon me as I grow older more and more. Shrubs and flowers and such small gay things, that bloom and please and fade and wither and are gone and we care not for them, are refreshing interests, in life, and if we cannot say never fading pleasures, we may say unreproved pleasures and never grieving losses.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Life, Appreciation, Gratitude

  14 Copy quote

• The ideal garden is one in which a collection of trees, shrubs and plants have been procured and allotted to the best space available and are so arranged and tended that they are seen to their advantage, each in relation to the other. Every plant, of whatever shape or size, should be chosen not only for its individual merits but for its power to enhance the charms of neighbouring plants by contrast or combination in foliage or in flower colour.

  Penelope Hobhouse

  Flower, Garden, Space

  9 Copy quote

• A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.]

  John Charles Polanyi

  Wise, Wisdom, Science

  15 Copy quote

• Listen to the sermon preached to you by the flowers, the trees, the shrubs, the sky, and the whole world. Notice how they preach to you a sermon full of love, of praise of God, and how they invite you to glorify the sublimity of that sovereign Artist who has given them being.

  Paul of the Cross

  Flower, Artist, Sky

  48 Copy quote

• Of all formal things in the world, a clipped hedge is the most formal; and of all the informal things in the world, a forest tree is the most informal.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Tree, World, Forests

  Henry Ward Beecher (1866). “Royal truths”, p.89

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• I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge, or a vigour of spring, as well as an infinite variety of colour that no artefact I have seen in the last sixty years can rival...each day, as I look, I wonder where my eyes were yesterday.

  Bernard Berenson

  Spring, Flower, Eye

  8 Copy quote

• If misery loves company, misery has company enough.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Love, Sad, Disease

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.56, Courier Corporation

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• Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd,
  And still where many a garden flower grows wild,
  There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
  The village preacher's modest mansion rose.
  A man he was to all the country dear,
  And passing rich with forty pounds a year;
  Remote from town's he ran his godly race,
  Nor e'er had chang'd nor wish'd to change his place;
  Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,
  By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour;
  Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize.
  More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Country, Fashion, Flower

  Oliver Goldsmith (1856). “The Miscellaneous Works: Poems. Miscellaneous pieces. Dramas. Criticism relating to poetry and the belles-lettres”, p.69

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• My own preference is for mixed (beds) where there are ...groups of larger shrubs on corners and elsewhere to give shape to the views and to create surprises.

  Graham Stuart Thomas

  Views, Giving, Bed

  Graham Stuart Thomas (1984). “The art of planting, or, The planter's handbook”, David R Godine Pub

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• The nature of the place...whether high or low, moist or dry, whether sloping north or south, or bearing tall trees or low shrubs...generally gives hint as to its inhabitants.

  John James Audubon

  Giving, Tree, Hints

  John James Audubon (1969). “Audubon, by Himself: A Profile of John James Audubon from Writings”

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• Lyon knew she wasn't aware she was being watched, either. She wouldn't have eaten the leaf otherwise, or reached for another. “Sir, which one is Princess Christina?” Andrew asked Lyon, just as Rhone started in choking on his laughter. Rhone has obviously been watching Christina, too. “Sir?” “The blond-headed one,” Lyon muttered, shaking his head. He watched in growing disbelief as Christina daintily popped another leaf into her mouth. “Which blond-headed one?” Andrew persisted. “The one eating the shrubs.

  Julie Garwood

  Laughter, Princess, Mouths

  8 Copy quote

• There's nothing perplexing to me about a leafy shrub evolving out of the big bang, but that the post office exists because carbon exploded out of a supernova is a phenomenon so outrageous it makes my head twitch.

  Steve Toltz

  Office, Bangs, Bigs

  Steve Toltz (2008). “A fraction of the whole”

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• The water-lily, in the midst of waters, opens its leaves and expands its petals, at the first pattering of the shower, and rejoices in the rain-drops with a quicker sympathy than the packed shrubs in the sandy desert.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Freedom, Rain, Water Lily

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• Behold the male beast roaring in the jungle for his mate," said Elphaba. "See how the female beast giggles behind a shrub while she organizes her face to say, Pardon dear, did you say something?

  Gregory Maguire

  Males, Roaring, Female

  Gregory Maguire (2013). “The Wicked Years Complete Collection: Wicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz”, p.99, Harper Collins

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• Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Rivers, Perfect, Tree

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.56, Courier Corporation

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• I wanted to design a chair which looked like a shrub pruned to look
  like a chair.

  Richard Schultz

  Design, Looks, Chairs

  7 Copy quote

• There is an herb named in Latine Convolvulus (i.e. with wind), growing among shrubs and bushes, with carrieth a flower not unlike to this Lilly, save that it yeeldeth no smell nor hath those chives within; for whitenesse they resemble one another very much, as if Nature in making this floure were a learning and trying her skill how to frame the Lilly indeed.

  Pliny the Elder

  Flower, Wind, Skills

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• The virtuous to those mansions go
  Where pleasures unembitter'd flow,
  Where, leading up a jocund band,
  Vigor and Youth dance hand in hand,
  Whilst Zephyr, with harmonious gales,
  Pipes softest music through the vales,
  And Spring and Flora, gaily crown'd,
  With velvet carpet spread the ground;
  With livelier blush where roses bloom,
  And every shrub expires perfume.

  Charles Churchill

  Spring, Hands, Rose

  Charles Churchill (1762). “The Ghost”, p.38

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• If on creation's morn the king of heaven
  To shrubs and flowers a sovereign lord had given,
  O beauteous rose, he had anointed thee
  Of shrubs and flowers the sovereign lord to be;
  The spotless emblem of unsullied truth,
  The smile of beauty and the glow of youth,
  The garden's pride, the grace of vernal bowers,
  The blush of meadows, and the eye of flowers.

  Henry George Bohn

  Kings, Flower, Eye

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• He who lives up to a little light shall have more light; he who lives up to a little knowledge shall have more knowledge; he who lives up to a little faith shall have more faith, and he who lives up to a little love shall have more love. Verily the main reason why men are such babes and shrubs in grace is because they do not live up their attainments.

  Thomas Brooks

  Men, Light, Grace

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• If we plant a flower or a shrub and water it daily it will grow so tall that in time we shall need a spade and a hoe to uproot it. It is just so, I think, when we commit a fault, however small, each day, and do not cure ourselves of it.

  Teresa of Avila

  Flower, Thinking, Hoe

  St. Teresa of Avila (2002). “Complete Works St. Teresa Of Avila”, p.372, A&C Black

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• A blight had fallen on the trees and shrubs; and the wind, at length beginning to break the unnatural stillness that had prevailed all day, sighed heavily from time to time, as though foretelling in grief the ravages of the coming storm. The bat skimmed in fantastic flights through the heavy air, and the ground was alive with crawling things, whose instinct brought them forth to swell and fatten in the rain.

  Charles Dickens

  Grief, Rain, Air

  Charles Dickens (1870). “Novels”, p.38

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